Warning - the XCode plugin does not work with static libraries

[Martin]

If you have a workspace containing a library, and a project that includes the library, then if you make a change to the library then that change is never, I repeat *never*, included in your app/.ipa.

This applies to libraries only afaik.

I've spent two days digging into this and have however found the steps necessary for a workaround:

1) XCode/XCodeBuild does not cope very well with static libraries in general (I've noticed lots of glitches over the past several months). If you build, then make a change to the library, then build again then 

XCodeBuild will not include your change into the app unless you do a clean first.

So if you are using XCodeBuild in conjunction with static libraries make sure you also do something like this:

xcodebuild -workspace /Users/User/Workspace.xcworkspace -scheme NameOfScheme clean

2) Note that clicking the Clean Before Build flag in the Jenkins XCode plugin will *not* achieve the same affect. Look at the console output from the above command and look at the console output from Jenkins with this flag set - it is not the same, nor is the result, therefore if you need to properly clean things add a call to XCodeBuild clean explicitly.

3) Even if you add the two lines explicitly to the Jenkins script, then changes to the library are still not included. I found the only way to get the change included in the build output was to first delete XCodes build directory for your workspace, thus you need to add this line to the Jenkins script before the build starts:

rm -r /Users/User/Library/Developer/XCode/DerivedData/*

(If you have more than one workspace then adapt this command accordingly to only delete folders for the particular workspace you are dealing with - directories with the name NameOfWorkspace-randomstring get generated in DerivedData folder).

If you do that then finally your changes will be applied to your build. This last step is not necessary if not using Jenkins, therefore my conclusion is it is *yet another* bug with the XCode plugin.

Not the first problem I've found with it - use it at your peril if your project isn't striaghtforward.

[Benjamin Lau]

I think I might be glad that I chose to roll my own using Ant and xcodebuild...

Ben

[Jerome Lacoste]

Martin

* is this issue opened in jira ?

* would you be willing to provide a dummy test project for me to use as integration test ?

Thanks

Jerome